Vibrant Media, the owners of the Intellitxt on site link advertising network, have secured $25 million in funding from backers such as ABS Capital Partners and Messpierson Investeringsmaatschappij of The Netherlands. Rafat at PaidContent was one of the first to run the story and is a “vocal opponent” of this form of advertising.

Rafat believes that the Intellitxt form of advertising, which adds links to certain keywords in story content, and then those links direct the user to the advertiser’s landing page, is “a dangerous path for online advertising, and damages the credibility of the content for the user.”

The “dangerous path” of content link advertising is not stopping the growth of this form of contextual advertising and it is sure to expand past the tech site market, as more and more publishers are looking for ways besides Google, Yahoo, and Chitika to monetize their sites and blogs. I really like Nick’s quote from Threadwatch, “Watch out blogosphere, here comes IntelliTXT.”

With the funding behind them and the success of other annoying/innovative advertising formats, Vibrant may indeed offer a blog / small publisher advertising service.